Salvatore Esposito

Photographer
THE HELL OF SCAMPIA
Biography: SALVATORE ESPOSITO LIVES AND WORKS IN NAPLES. HIS FIRST WORK EXPERIENCE IS AS AN ASSISTANT FASHION, BUT HIS MAIN CONCERN IS THE PHOTOJOURNALIST, AND BEGAN WORKING WITH A LOCAL NEWSPAPER WHERE HE WORKED ON NEWS, POLITICS AND SPORTS. HE IS... MORE
Public Story
THE HELL OF SCAMPIA
Copyright Salvatore Esposito/Contrasto 2024
Updated Dec 2012
Topics Crime/Criminal Justice, Documentary, Drug Abuse, Italy, Photography, photojournalism, Violence, Youth

My photographic project focuses on two pillars of the organized crime in Naples, that is drug and micro-criminality. These factors are connected to each other and cannot be set aside. The first factor, the drug, is an economical engine for the clans dealing with it; while the second is about felons in charge of the drug pushing markets. Clans rely on the non-stop replacement of juvenile delinquency; children are often enlisted by the organized criminality at the age of ten, something easy to do in suburbs at-risk, such as Scampia, where state institutions are non-existing. Because of social decay, children often need money to provide for their own necessities and those of their younger brothers and sisters; sometimes they have to support their whole family or their parents in prison. These men-children grow up deprived of the light-heartedness proper to their age; they run risks, they take responsibilities, they face fears that usually are, or should be, beyond youths’ lives. Initiation to weapons happens at an early age, about 14 years old, when by dealing with adult pushers they earn around 20,000 euros per month. The peculiarity of this economic mechanism is that these guys are “drug freelances”: they manage the drug markets under the control of the Camorra, yet at the same time they are authorized retailers making money out of sales. This youths have always been living by the rules of bullying and self-defense, fundamental rules for people growing up in an environment where they couldn’t even trust their own parents. This is the reason why it only counts to survive at all costs. In order to gain a position in the neighbourhood, to be respected, to provide food for their families and to buy branded clothing items, such as Hogan or Dolce & Gabbana, they have to prove as soon as possible to be real men. Selling drugs is the easiest and most ordinary solution for these youths as from being a burden to their families they become their economic engine. For this reason, parents end up standing by the criminal choices of their offspring.

August 23, 2012: The boss Gaetano Marino is riddled with bullets near the beach in Terracina, in the midst of the terrified bathers. It is the beginning of a new bloody war of the Camorra, this time between the bosses and their splinter rib, the so-called "girati". Shootings, raids and arrests are continuing at a brisk pace, never dormant awakening the ghosts of the feud in 2005. But with one key difference: at that time were the colonels to oppose the leaders, finally managed to defeat them. Protagonists of today are their children, young gunmen armed with ferocity and resentment never been lost, that have no scruples to kill close to schools and shops crowded, potentially also affect the elderly and children. The old rules seem to jump to the Camorra always called the blood more blood and violence goes beyond the boundaries of Scampia and Secondigliano, to explode and spread far beyond the Neapolitan territory.

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